Criminologist and former investigator Jillian Peterson answers the internet's thrilling questions about true crime.
Director: Lisandro Perez-Rey
Director of Photography: Constantine Economides
Editor: Louville Moore
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Brandon White
Production Manager: D. Eric Martinez
Production Coordinator: Fernando Davila
Casting Producer: Nick Sawyer
Camera Operator: Cloud
Sound Mixer: Brett Van Deusen
Production Assistant: Albie Smith
Post Production Supervisor: Alexa Deutsch
Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Additional Editor: Paul Tael
Assistant Editor: Andy Morell
Director: Lisandro Perez-Rey
Director of Photography: Constantine Economides
Editor: Louville Moore
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Brandon White
Production Manager: D. Eric Martinez
Production Coordinator: Fernando Davila
Casting Producer: Nick Sawyer
Camera Operator: Cloud
Sound Mixer: Brett Van Deusen
Production Assistant: Albie Smith
Post Production Supervisor: Alexa Deutsch
Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Additional Editor: Paul Tael
Assistant Editor: Andy Morell
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00 I'm Jillian Peterson.
00:01 I'm a criminologist and former investigator.
00:03 Let's answer some questions from the internet.
00:05 This is True Crime Support.
00:07 (upbeat music)
00:10 @BecomingJill asks,
00:13 "Isn't the spouse always the first suspect?"
00:16 When it comes to women being murdered, yes.
00:19 35 to 50% of them are murdered
00:22 by either a current spouse or partner
00:24 or a former spouse or partner.
00:26 So if you can rule out things like a robbery gone bad,
00:30 a drug deal gone bad, a fight that escalated,
00:33 gang violence, if you can rule all those things out,
00:35 definitely your next most likely suspect
00:39 is going to be the spouse.
00:40 @JojiShe asked, "Did you know that 1%
00:43 "of cold cases are solved?"
00:45 Our current clearance rate for murder in this country
00:48 is only about 50%.
00:50 If you commit a murder, it's kind of flip of the coin
00:52 whether or not you get arrested for it.
00:54 Our clearance rates are way down.
00:56 I think it has to do with we've seen such an increase
00:59 in homicide the last few years.
01:01 And with that, we've had a decrease
01:03 just in the number of police officers we have.
01:05 It's a lot more than 1% of cases that are unsolved.
01:10 @BrotherGrimbo asked, "Did Jack the Ripper exist
01:13 "or was Victorian England just kind of stabby?"
01:15 Jack the Ripper did exist,
01:17 committed a series of really violent gruesome murders.
01:21 So as an example, just to show what it was like
01:24 during that period of time,
01:26 this is a news report from 1888.
01:28 I think it really shows that Victorian England
01:31 was a rather stabby place during this period of time.
01:34 There's actually another serial killer
01:36 who was operating at the time named Thomas Cream.
01:39 He was convicted of poisoning nine or 10 people
01:43 during the exact same period of time.
01:45 During his execution, his final words are rumored to be,
01:50 "I am Jack dot dot dot,"
01:52 although he was actually in prison
01:55 at the time of some of the murders,
01:56 so it really couldn't have been him.
01:58 And we still don't know exactly who Jack the Ripper is.
02:01 @MSLSimpson asked, "My sister just sent me a message
02:04 "to say that she listened to a podcast
02:06 "and is going off to try to solve a murder.
02:08 "Who needs the police?"
02:09 Yes, this is a thing where individuals listen to podcasts
02:13 and they think, "I can solve this."
02:14 It's known as citizen sleuths.
02:16 The January 6th riots, a lot of the individuals
02:19 who ended up being criminally charged
02:20 were identified by citizen sleuths on social media,
02:23 trying to identify them.
02:25 In the case of the Gabby Petito murder,
02:27 who was killed by Brian Laundrie, her fiance,
02:30 she was missing for a long period of time.
02:33 It was really a group of young people on TikTok
02:35 that started uploading videos
02:37 of the park where she went missing, the van was spotted,
02:40 and they were really able to locate her body
02:43 and isolate where she was located.
02:45 However, if you talk to most police officers,
02:47 they will say they do not like this movement
02:49 of citizen sleuths, that oftentimes
02:51 they can go down rabbit holes
02:52 and end up accusing people who are truly innocent,
02:55 and that can really destroy lives.
02:57 @Nermanman46302 asks, "Why do serial killers kill?
03:02 "I wanna study their brains so badly."
03:04 Generally, we can say there's three big categories,
03:08 one being power and control.
03:10 I think one example of a power and control serial killer
03:14 might be somebody like the Zodiac killer,
03:16 who was attacking primarily young couples.
03:20 It was really about murdering people
03:22 who were kind of in the prime of their life.
03:24 One is a sexual motivation, sexual fantasy.
03:28 The sexual fantasy category is often people
03:31 who are sexually aroused by violence
03:34 or sexually aroused by having sex with bodies
03:37 after they've killed them.
03:38 One example of somebody motivated by sexual fantasy
03:42 would be Ted Bundy.
03:43 The third category would be a serial killer
03:46 motivated by hallucinations.
03:49 Good example of that would be like the Son of Sam killer,
03:51 who was motivated by delusions.
03:53 There has been some studies of mostly murderer's brains.
03:57 We do see some differences,
03:59 particularly in an area called the amygdala,
04:01 which is a part of the brain that controls things
04:03 like fear and aggression.
04:05 It's hard to say that that's causal.
04:07 It's the brain that causes the behavior,
04:09 the behavior that causes changes in the brain,
04:11 but there does seem to be something there
04:13 in some of these early studies.
04:14 @Codesmithio asks, "Why have murders increased
04:18 "during the COVID-19 pandemic?"
04:20 We saw a massive spike in homicide during COVID-19,
04:24 the biggest year-on-year increase in homicide
04:27 we've ever seen since we started tracking this.
04:29 It was about a third increase or a 30% jump.
04:32 Other forms of crime went down,
04:34 but homicide specifically spiked.
04:36 Could be because people weren't working,
04:39 there was financial strain, there was stress.
04:42 There's also this thing that happened
04:44 where George Floyd was murdered.
04:46 A lot of cities started pulling back their policing.
04:49 That's sometimes referred to as de-policing.
04:52 So it's really hard to pull apart
04:54 which of these factors was the main driver.
04:57 It was likely all of it at once.
04:58 @LeePerezRay asks, "Is #Merica the best at murder
05:02 "in the whole world?"
05:03 We are a standout when it comes to murder.
05:07 If you look at other countries similar to ours,
05:11 so places in Europe, Canada, Australia,
05:14 most countries are under one homicide
05:18 per 100,000 residents.
05:20 The United States is at 4.382.
05:23 We aren't the worst in the entire world.
05:25 There are other countries per capita in Latin America
05:27 who do have a higher rate than us.
05:29 Places like Honduras, Mexico, Jamaica.
05:34 But when it comes to similarly developed countries,
05:37 America really stands out.
05:39 @TriciaMcEwan13 asks, "Could a psychopath grow through life
05:43 "without giving any sign,
05:45 "or will there always be something that is a giveaway,
05:47 "some wee trait?"
05:48 Yes, you can go through life
05:50 and not know that someone is a psychopath.
05:53 You see high rates of psychopathy
05:55 in industries like the entertainment industry,
05:58 law enforcement, law, politics.
06:02 Being a serial killer, being violent, committing crime
06:06 is actually not one of the symptoms.
06:07 It's what we tend to think of when we think of psychopaths.
06:10 There really isn't anything like killing animals
06:13 or setting fires that's gonna be a tell.
06:16 If I was gonna name one thing that might be a giveaway,
06:19 it would be trouble reading other people's emotions
06:23 and maybe mimicking back emotions
06:25 without really feeling those emotions.
06:27 @ThackerYardy says, "Okay, can someone please tell me
06:30 "the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath, please?"
06:33 There's really no clear distinction.
06:35 Sociopath is a word that was used more in the '80s.
06:39 In the '90s, it's used less today.
06:41 It's used maybe by the media and in pop culture,
06:44 but as the criminology field,
06:46 we've really moved towards psychopathy
06:48 being the thing that we look for,
06:49 that we can define clinically, that we know how to test for.
06:53 And so the field had just gone more in the direction
06:55 of using psychopath as opposed to sociopath.
06:58 @David75983862 asks, "So since the early '90s,
07:03 "why have gun murder rate gone down
07:06 "while the number of guns has significantly increased?"
07:09 I might disagree on this one.
07:10 Our murder rate in the '90s was extremely high.
07:13 Then we did see a big dip in the 2000, 2010,
07:17 so it was sort of high in the '90s, it went down,
07:19 and then the last five years,
07:21 and particularly the last two years,
07:22 we've really seen it spark back up again.
07:24 During that period of time,
07:26 gun ownership increased in this country over time,
07:29 particularly the last couple of years.
07:31 So we now have more guns than people in this country,
07:33 but 120 Americans are killed by guns every day.
07:36 That would include homicides, suicides,
07:39 accidents, police shootings, but about 120 people total.
07:44 @TheFlyingNipple asks, "Terrifying.
07:46 "I wonder how many unexplained missing persons there are."
07:49 It's about half a million people a year go missing.
07:52 That is down from maybe a million a year back in the '90s,
07:56 but estimates are about 90% of them are found.
07:59 Most of them are young people running away from home,
08:02 but 10% of that half million missing
08:05 still leaves 50,000 people who are missing
08:07 and unaccounted for every year.
08:09 @CCJoe1 asks, "Real question,
08:12 "what percentage of mass shooters are male?"
08:15 The answer is 98% of mass shooters are male.
08:19 @TruthOrDare asks, "My question about
08:21 "these mass shooters is this.
08:22 "Why schools, whether it's an elementary,
08:24 "middle, or high school,
08:25 "what attracts you to kill children?"
08:27 About 91, 92% of them are actually students at that school.
08:32 So this is people targeting their own school,
08:36 or they might be former students,
08:38 but most likely they're current students.
08:40 They're 15, 16 years old.
08:42 My own research shows that these perpetrators
08:44 come from homes with lots of violence and abuse.
08:48 They tend to study other perpetrators who are like them
08:51 and feel like they're a part of them,
08:53 and then they target their own school
08:54 because that's where they have the grievance against.
08:57 Those are the people that they blame for their misery.
08:59 School shootings are designed to be final acts.
09:02 So perpetrators go in
09:04 knowing they're not gonna come out of it,
09:06 and in fact, they want to be known for this.
09:08 They're craving that notoriety.
09:10 They want their name in the history books.
09:12 @SnackTime asks, "Murdoch Murders
09:14 "is such a crazy series on Netflix.
09:16 "Like how in the world did these people
09:17 "get away with all of this?"
09:19 Alex Murdoch has been convicted
09:20 of killing his wife and his child,
09:23 and there's also other murders
09:25 that he may or may not be guilty of,
09:28 including a housekeeper.
09:30 I think this is a good example
09:32 of how in these small communities,
09:35 it can be really hard
09:36 to have an independent criminal investigation,
09:39 especially if somebody who has a lot of status
09:41 and power in the town.
09:43 And it's really important
09:44 that whoever's investigating a crime
09:46 has absolutely no relationship with any of the suspects
09:49 because once that starts getting mixed,
09:52 you see mistakes getting made,
09:54 and it could be a conscious bias,
09:56 but oftentimes it's just unconscious
09:58 because of the preconceived notions
10:00 that you have about people.
10:02 @BookMarkQuinn asked, "Do you not worry
10:05 "that all the criminology television programs
10:07 "that are on these days,
10:08 "that the criminals will learn from it
10:10 "and avoid detection?"
10:11 We've seen television programs
10:14 having an effect on the everyday public.
10:16 We refer to this as the CSI effect
10:18 in the criminal justice system,
10:20 where people sitting on juries
10:22 have this expectation that there'll be carpet fiber
10:26 from some foreign place
10:27 that will help them identify the body,
10:29 and if that doesn't exist,
10:30 then they're more likely to acquit.
10:32 There's been one study that looked at this,
10:34 and they did not find a similar CSI effect for criminals.
10:38 It did not seem like they were learning from these programs
10:41 and getting smarter at committing crimes,
10:43 likely because a lot of crime is maybe impulsive
10:46 and not that well planned out.
10:47 So far, we are not seeing that.
10:49 Next question.
10:50 Who was America's most prolific serial killer?
10:53 America's most prolific serial killer
10:55 was named Samuel Little.
10:57 He confessed to killing over 90 people.
11:01 This is a series of mugshots of Samuel Little.
11:04 He was arrested by the police for various crimes,
11:08 but it was never put together
11:10 that he was the one murdering all of these women.
11:12 He committed murder from about 1970 until 2005.
11:18 His victims tended to be sex workers,
11:21 women addicted to drugs, women living on the streets,
11:25 and his method was he tended to strangle these women.
11:27 It wasn't until they eventually pulled Samuel Little's DNA
11:32 that they were able to go back and connect him
11:34 to all these previous crimes,
11:36 and then he confessed to all of them.
11:38 He can be connected to, for sure, 50 or 60 or so of them,
11:42 but they think that all 90 of his confessions are legit.
11:46 Puppetcombo asks, what kind of job
11:48 would a serial killer have?
11:50 And if we look at patterns in the data,
11:52 there are some jobs that emerge as maybe overrepresented,
11:55 things like mechanics, machinists.
11:58 You see a number of truck drivers and police officers
12:01 where it's maybe easier to get away with the crime.
12:04 The data on serial killers is not great
12:07 generally across the board,
12:08 just 'cause there's so few of them and it's hard to study.
12:11 @tabzoss asks, in light of the recent case of the nurse,
12:14 are female serial killers more likely
12:16 to be in caring professions than not?
12:18 There's not that many female serial killers,
12:20 but of them, there have been quite a few nurses.
12:23 A study recently published that looked at 16 different
12:28 nurses who had committed serial murder
12:31 across the globe and across centuries,
12:33 and they did find that it tended to be poisoning
12:37 and it tended to go undetected for a long period of time
12:40 because of the profession that they had.
12:42 This recent case, I believe, is referring
12:45 to the British nurse who was just sentenced
12:48 for killing seven newborn babies.
12:51 Another example of a serial killer nurse
12:54 is Kristen Gilbert, who is an American nurse
12:56 who was convicted of murdering four of her patients
13:00 that were in her care.
13:01 I would not extend that to other caring professions.
13:03 I don't think there's a lot of social work serial killers,
13:06 but certainly when it comes to nurses, we see it.
13:08 @patdoc5 asks, what age do serial killers
13:12 typically start killing people?
13:14 It's actually older than other forms of violence.
13:16 When it comes to serial killing, they start mid to late 20s,
13:20 so it tends to be a bit of a later onset.
13:22 @dloether715 asks two questions.
13:26 Who was the Zodiac Killer
13:27 and why wasn't Ted Cruz ever caught?
13:30 There's a lot of people who have been accused
13:31 of being the Zodiac Killer over time.
13:33 Ted Cruz is not one of them.
13:35 The Zodiac Killer committed a series of murders
13:39 in Northern California in the 1960s,
13:41 at least five that they know of.
13:43 There may have been more.
13:44 This is a composite sketch of what they think
13:47 the Zodiac Killer looked like
13:49 based on a couple of the victims who actually survived.
13:53 There was one suspect that was named.
13:57 Arthur Lee Allen was a school teacher,
13:59 but there was never enough evidence
14:01 to actually link him to the crimes.
14:02 It was all circumstantial.
14:04 He did several years in prison for molesting children
14:07 and then died in the early '90s,
14:09 so nobody was ever convicted of these crimes.
14:12 There was a number of unique things
14:13 about the Zodiac Killer.
14:15 He sent letters that he demanded be printed
14:17 in the newspaper.
14:19 He created these mathematical ciphers,
14:22 which were like these coded puzzles
14:24 that he wanted people to spend time on,
14:26 trying to unravel.
14:28 One was cracked about a week after it was published.
14:30 Two are still unsolved,
14:32 and one was actually only cracked a few years ago,
14:35 60 years after the crime.
14:37 A team of mathematicians cracked it.
14:39 The ciphers didn't give away his identity.
14:42 They basically just said, "I like killing.
14:44 "All my victims will become my slaves."
14:46 In an afterlife, it didn't give any additional clues.
14:49 He was interested in making the public
14:52 a part of these murders,
14:53 drawing people in, forcing them to sort of play
14:56 with these codes that he was publishing.
14:58 @BigBall01790335 asks,
15:02 "Why do serial killers in prison
15:04 "get tons of marriage proposals from women?"
15:06 This is a phenomenon.
15:08 I have worked on capital murder cases
15:10 of people facing the death penalty,
15:12 and the more media coverage the case got,
15:15 the more letters those individuals would receive.
15:18 I think women who write these letters
15:20 are romantically drawn towards this very dangerous person
15:25 who has done these scary, dangerous things.
15:28 I don't think these women are looking to themselves
15:30 to get harmed, but they are drawn to the fact
15:32 that this person is capable of doing that level of harm.
15:36 @ColleenBen asked,
15:37 "Does it seem like family annihilators
15:39 "are happening more often?"
15:41 There was a spike of family annihilations in 2019,
15:44 where we saw record levels, and then it's come back down.
15:47 I think we hear about them more often through media
15:51 and through social media and our exposure,
15:52 so it can feel like they're happening more often.
15:55 Family annihilation is when a man kills,
15:57 typically, his wife, his children,
16:00 and then usually himself, all in one act.
16:02 We have about 10 to 20 of those per year.
16:06 Family annihilations, unfortunately,
16:07 are always something that has happened in history.
16:10 Family annihilators are typically men.
16:12 They're a bit older, 40s, maybe 50s,
16:16 elementary school-aged children.
16:19 They tend to have a history of domestic violence
16:21 and suicidality.
16:23 They are suicides, in addition to being homicides,
16:26 but they're these kind of angry suicides,
16:29 where it's, "I'm not just gonna kill myself.
16:30 "I'm gonna make sure my wife and children come with me
16:33 "so they don't get to exist without me."
16:35 So there's a level of, I think, control
16:38 that comes with committing that sort of violence.
16:40 @DanaBlankenhorn asked,
16:42 "Why did Jeffrey Dahmer eat people?"
16:45 He was a serial killer who, after he had killed someone,
16:50 he would take apart their bodies.
16:52 Body parts were found in the freezer
16:55 in various states of decay,
16:57 and then he would actually admit it to eating their bodies.
17:01 Jeffrey Dahmer has been asked about this
17:03 on a few different occasions,
17:05 and I think there's one theory
17:06 that this is really about complete dominance
17:09 and control over your victims.
17:11 You can't be more dominant over something
17:13 than to consume it.
17:15 Then there's been some recent reports lately
17:16 that said it was maybe more about actually connecting
17:19 with the victims, that he was very lonely,
17:22 and consuming his victims allowed him
17:24 to kind of be a part of those victims.
17:27 @MLMarkitanova asked,
17:29 "If Ted Bundy were killing in this gen,
17:31 "he wouldn't make it too far.
17:32 "Everyone has phones that have emergency features,
17:34 "drones and satellites could track him,
17:36 "cars are traceable,
17:37 "today's forensics and DNA tracing is incredible, et cetera."
17:40 Serial killing really peaked in the '70s, '80s,
17:43 and early '90s.
17:45 Then we've seen just this massive fall
17:47 where there are now very few serial killers today.
17:50 That's because of advances in all sorts of technology,
17:54 primarily DNA.
17:55 Also, we've just changed our behavior.
17:57 Not a lot of people are going hitchhiking these days
17:59 and getting in cars with strangers,
18:01 and if you did, you'd certainly text someone
18:03 to say you were there.
18:03 So I agree that Ted Bundy would not get away
18:06 with serial killing these days.
18:08 @MetalDad asked, "Who else thinks missing hikers
18:11 "isn't just a series of unfortunate accidents?"
18:14 Most of those cases are people who fall,
18:17 or there's accidents,
18:19 but a number of people are not recovered.
18:21 And there is actually a number of serial killers,
18:24 of murders, where it took place while somebody was hiking.
18:28 It makes me think of the Gabby Petito murder
18:31 who was killed by her fiance, Brian Laundrie,
18:34 when they were out hiking.
18:35 And this makes me think about this theory of crime.
18:37 It's called routine activities,
18:39 and it's where you have a motivated offender,
18:41 a suitable target, and then a lack of capable guardianship.
18:46 And so hiking is kind of your perfect example
18:48 of a total lack of guardianship.
18:50 There's nobody around for miles.
18:51 There's no cameras.
18:52 Oftentimes, there's no cell coverage.
18:54 You can easily dispose of a body.
18:56 You can make it look like an accident.
18:58 Those are all the questions for today.
19:00 Those were some great questions.
19:01 Thanks so much for watching True Crime Support.
19:04 (electronic music)